Seattle City Council Briefing 1/25/21

Good morning, everyone.

The January 25th, 2021 council briefing meeting will come to order.

It is 9.32 AM.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Mosqueda.

Present.

Peterson.

Here.

Sawant.

Here.

Strauss.

Present.

Herbold.

Here.

Or as.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nine.

Nine present.

much.

If there is no objection, the minutes of January 19, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, I don't have anything to report this morning.

So let's go ahead and get into our first presentation, which is the federal lobbying presentation.

We do have Sierra Howlett-Brown with us from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and Leslie Pullner from Holland and Knight.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Sierra to make some introductory remarks, and then we'll kick it over to Leslie.

Good morning, everybody.

Sierra Howlett-Brown, Director of Federal Affairs for our Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Thank you for having us this morning.

I know you're usually with our state team, and keep humoring us a little bit with our federal updates.

We're trying to come in and meet with you all quarterly, but thought that this was a great opportunity to start off the new year in this new Congress, talking about some of the changes that have been made.

And Leslie, our federal lobbyist, she'll introduce herself as well.

And most of you have met her.

Talking about the omnibus package and the second stimulus package that passed just briefly, and then going into President Biden's recovery plan as well.

So, Leslie, I'll let you kick it off.

Terrific.

And I know that Hannah is going to help me with the slides.

Hopefully, you can all see them.

Are they up?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Next slide.

So, very happy to be with you in truly a new day in Washington, D.C. Very, very exciting.

Just to recap where we were in December.

In December, Congress passed HR 133, which was the FY 2021 omnibus package.

And that was a $2.4 trillion legislative package, a 6,000 page bill that included FY 21 appropriations.

So all the federal funding for this fiscal year, along with a $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, the WERDA or Water Resources Development Act reauthorization, a package extending a number of tax breaks called the Tax Extenders Package, and then the Energy Act of 2020. And I'm going to focus just for a quick moment really on the coronavirus relief package.

As I mentioned, it was Quite a large bill, 6,000 pages, so there'd be a lot to delve into if we were to do the whole thing.

But next slide.

So, just some of the highlights from the $900 billion coronavirus relief package that came through, really touching on a number of areas.

You know, I think as you've all seen in the media, you know, $600.

checks for individuals, an additional round of PPP, including some targeted funds for arts venues that I know are going to be really important in the city of Seattle.

$8.75 billion for vaccine development and distribution, $22.4 billion for contract, excuse me, contact tracing.

And I think one of the pieces to note about this package is that, you know, unlike the CARES Act, which really included quite a bit of direct funding for cities, and in particular the city of Seattle, this really, this package is, you know, less helpful to the city specifically, more helpful to the individuals within it.

That was what they were able to achieve bipartisan resolution on and bipartisan compromise on.

And so You know, I think sometimes some folks have been surprised to not see quite as much funding coming out to the city.

Next slide, please.

One area where there is direct funding is around emergency rental assistance and housing.

And then of course, there is a new program, a $638 million program that Seattle Public Utilities was really involved in helping to advocate and push for that's providing emergency assistance assistance for low-income households for drinking water and wastewater assistance.

Next slide.

So, of course, now with President Biden and Vice President Harris's inauguration, we have another opportunity, as you heard President Biden say when he was President-elect Biden, that he viewed that December plan as really a down payment on additional assistance and Shortly before he was sworn in, he released his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which really has kind of three major categories of proposals, one around healthcare and COVID-19 response, one around providing additional response for American workers and families, and then support for small business and governments.

And while his plan includes some executive actions, a lot of this is going to depend on congressional legislation.

And so there's been an early debate happening about whether or not they should attempt to try to move this on a bipartisan basis, as President Biden said he would like, or if they should use a somewhat arcane procedure called budget reconciliation, which for our purposes, I think the important thing to note is it would allow Congress to move legislation with a simple majority.

You get a limited number of bites at the apple with budget reconciliation, and so Um, you know, uh, the president and his team need to be really selective about when they want Congress to use this.

Um, but I think at this point, based on conversations, um, that have been had on the Hill over the weekend, it really looks like I think Democrats are going to forego trying to do something on a bipartisan basis.

They haven't said that publicly yet, but it looks like they're probably going to skip that step.

and try to move straight to reconciliation.

Reconciliation is normally a process that actually takes a while.

It can be very cumbersome in the Senate and in Congress.

Now, Majority Leader Schumer is saying that he is going to try to move a reconciliation package within the next week to next, excuse me, month to six weeks, which is, you know, lightning speed for Congress and lightning speed for budget reconciliation.

But again, they're really committed to trying to get a very, very comprehensive package through.

Next slide, please.

And so while the package is likely to shift somewhat from what President Biden proposed.

It is likely to include significant funding for state and local governments, direct funding.

In fact, in his plan, he's proposed doing $350 billion in direct funding to state and locals.

Maybe that amount changes somewhat, but by using reconciliation, they will avoid having to deal with a trying to get bipartisan compromise on state and local funding, which as you'll recall, had been a major hang up in trying to get bipartisan legislation through the last time.

Next slide.

So just a couple of the highlights from the plan.

You know, $50 billion to expand testing, $30 billion for federal disaster relief, including 100% federal reimbursement for state and local governments.

I should note that actually President Biden did an executive order on federal cost share around FEMA last week, proposing that future FEMA assistance does not have a local cost share, so the feds would pay for it for all.

$20 billion for a national vaccination program, as I mentioned already, $350 billion in direct state and local funding, $20 billion for transit, additional funding for education, additional funding for small businesses.

Next slide, please.

And I should notice the note that the small business funding really focused on minority owned and small businesses that have been overlooked in the last PPP round.

And then, you know, a number of things, establishing a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, extending and expanding emergency paid leave, including ensuring that local governments can receive the payroll tax credit that was provided to private sector employers in the CARES Act, additional assistance for individuals, additional pandemic unemployment insurance, increasing the 300 per week benefit that was approved in December and making that a $400 per week benefit.

So really a huge package.

There are, as I mentioned, some things that may need to fall out because of the way budget reconciliation works, if they're going to use this simple majority procedure.

But again, the trade-off is we actually get a major package passed that includes state and direct funding, direct funding for state and local governments.

Next slide, please.

Just going through the plan a few.

with additional money for rental assistance, additional money for energy and water costs for low-income households, extending not only the CDC's eviction moratorium, which by the way, President Biden did as part of his executive orders, but then also doing a foreclosure, extending a foreclosure moratorium, extending SNAP, extending childcare support.

So really the full panoply of issues and needs being covered.

Next slide.

So we're seeing President Biden and Vice President Harris move very aggressively on their 100-day agenda.

They have said that their mission number one is curbing the spread of COVID-19.

And you saw the President and Vice President release their COVID-19 plan last week, along with a series of executive orders aiming to stem the spread of COVID-19, delivering economic assistance to Americans in need, helping to mitigate climate change, reversing Trump policies on immigration.

Then, and again, we saw executive orders last week, reinstating.

We may have lost Leslie.

I'm assuming everyone else is experiencing.

some difficulty here.

OK great.

It's not just me.

If we if she doesn't come back soon Council President we can shift over to the state report but maybe we'll give her a little more time.

OK.

Yes she has dropped off the call here.

OK.

I can also take a minute to discuss our federal goals and priorities.

Thank you, Sierra.

We wait for her to get back.

You should have all received in your emails as well our final kind of final draft of our federal goals and priorities for 2021 and in this new Congress.

It's pretty representative of all that should be representative of the mayor's priorities of your all priorities and the city writ large.

So it's very high level.

didn't have a lot of room for detail or nuance in it.

But I wanted you all to have the opportunity to take a look at it.

And if you see any glaring omissions or things that you would like added or have comments on, please do let me know by the end of this week.

It is an external document that we use to just inform our our partners on where the city's priorities are.

And as you can see from, I see we have Leslie back, but even what Leslie's presented already, a lot of our goals and priorities have been acknowledged and are represented by the Biden-Harris administration in this new package as well.

on the right track towards that, but wanted to give you all the opportunity to review that and see if you had any comments on it.

Again, it's an iterative working document, so always have opportunities to make adjustments to it as this world changes at the federal level.

Hopefully we have a little more stability in these next few years, but I'll shift back to Leslie now.

I think she's back and we can continue the presentation.

Great.

That's okay.

Sorry we lost you, Leslie.

No, apologies.

Good old technology.

Um, I think, you know, I was just, uh, where I was was just, uh, I'm not sure when you, when, when you lost me.

Um, but it was right here.

Okay.

Um, so using lots of executive orders, I think by the Biden team has experienced enough to know, um, that, you know, they're not, it's the same players that we've dealt with before on the Republican side.

And so I think they're going to be very bold in using executive orders.

Next slide.

So just to give you a number of day one executive orders coming through really across the board, dealing with the pandemic, dealing with immigration, climate change, rejoining Paris.

Next slide.

And then of course, the priority has been getting the cabinet through.

So a number of, he's made his full nominations now for top level for his secretaries.

And now we're starting to see some of the deputy secretaries and political appointees coming through.

Next slide.

really diverse cabinet, which has been a huge priority for President Biden.

Next slide.

And so last week, we saw Director of National Intelligence Averill Haynes and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin get approved by the Senate this week.

You know, today we'll see a vote on Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary.

The committee committees will vote out their state and DHS nominations, and then we'll also have additional nominations for HUD.

Department of Energy, VA Commerce, and Ambassador to the UN taken up by committees.

They are moving through these, though, very, very quickly.

We know, of course, as you've seen, that the House will transmit the articles of impeachment today, and so the Senate is now saying February 8th is when the impeachment process will begin in the Senate.

Candidly, I think the Biden team is pretty – is good with this timeline because this gives them time to get their cabinets nominees through the process as quickly as possible.

I think Leader Schumer is really committed to not having impeachment take up the entire agenda.

And so they're trying to figure out ways where maybe the Senate will do some work in the morning and then take up impeachment in the afternoon or vice versa.

But again, really, really ambitious agenda.

They're moving really aggressively.

And I am more than thrilled to be giving this report now today than I would have been three months ago.

So it really does start, it's feeling like it's a new day.

So I'm happy to take any questions.

Sorry again for the technology problems.

Council President.

All righty, folks.

I see several people in the queue.

I heard Council Member Juarez first, and then Council Member Herbold.

And then for anyone else who might have questions, if you can use the raise your hand feature in the Zoom to help me keep track, that'd be super.

Council Member Juarez, please.

Thank you.

Sorry, I didn't use the raise your hand feature.

That's all right.

I hadn't said it.

I hadn't said it.

Hey, Leslie, good to see you.

Nice to see you.

Happy New Year.

So our big concern, not just me, but all of Indian country, is the hold on Representative Holland from the representative congressman out of Minnesota.

So I've been on all these calls.

So is there any update more that you know of what's going to happen with that for her to be confirmed as Secretary of Interior, the first Native American confirmed as Secretary of Interior?

Yes, I don't have any.

Let me, I will check on that.

When I had last heard, I still may think that she is going to be confirmed, you know, obstacles notwithstanding, but I'm happy to find an exact timeline for you of when she's going and what they think the process will be.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just two quick questions.

The first relates to the testing and vaccine plan.

You mentioned that the plan itself includes about $30 billion for this purpose.

I believe this plan was passed back in December.

And I'm just wondering whether or not there is a recognition on the part of the Biden administration that this number might need to be revisited in light of the administration's goal of 100 million vaccines administered in 100 days, whether or not that $30 billion needs to be adjusted.

And then secondly, as it relates to the $14 billion for transit and $10 billion for highways, Do we have any information about how that will be allocated?

And given that this is considered part of the coronavirus relief package, I don't believe it's part of a and infrastructure package.

It's focused on relief.

I'm just wondering how those funds will be allocated and whether or not there is any eligibility to address our West Seattle Bridge or Sound Transit light rail third-party costs.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So on the vaccine, I mean, the administration, uh, is hearing loud and clear from everyone about the massive need for, um, additional funding for vaccines.

Um, and the funding that was approved in December was, is being really administered through these public health, uh, cooperative agreements that they have in place.

Their goal was really because they're trying to get the money out fast.

They've been trying to avoid having to create new structures and using existing formulas.

The challenge, of course, means that most of that money for the December package went through the states and then basically to four very, very large counties, L.A.

County, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York.

I will give the Biden team credit.

They've been doing a number of calls with cities directly to hear from them about kind of what could they do to partner more effectively to get vaccines out.

And I think as part of that, they are hearing the message that they, there may need to be more funding as well as the need to not only work through the states and the counties, but to work directly with cities as well.

So I think that's definitely part of it on transportation.

It is, those funds were distributed on the transit side through the urbanized area formula.

And so it's essentially the same formula that they had used for CARES.

It's primarily for operations.

And as you said, not really an infrastructure package, it's really to stem the loss and stem the bleeding that so many of our transit agencies are facing right now.

That said, I do want to mention on West Seattle Bridge and some of our transit projects, The Trump administration on their very last day in office released the Build and Infra Grant NOFOs.

Those have been clawed back because they obviously do not reflect this administration's priorities.

But this administration, the Biden team has said they want to get those, that money out as quickly as possible.

And so they're really committed to reformulating the NOFOs to ensure that they, you know, meet their priorities.

So around climate, around equity, et cetera.

but those will be hitting the ground and, you know, West Seattle Bridge may be a very good candidate for those.

The other piece too is the Biden administration has said, as you noted, that they really want to get an infrastructure plan in place.

And that is, you know, as soon as they can get climate, excuse me, as soon as they can get the coronavirus package through, they will turn their attention to that infrastructure package.

Thank you, Leslie.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Szilagyi.

Thank you, and thank you for all that important information that you've shared.

Just one question.

Do you know anything about the prospects for the grocery voucher program for the city continuing?

We know it has helped thousands of families stay fed over the last year, but I believe it's currently scheduled to expire at the end of April.

Thanks.

If we're able to get the direct state and local funding, I believe some of that was being used with the coronavirus relief funds that had been approved of in the CARES Act.

And so I believe that, you know, an additional allocation of direct funding would help ensure that we could continue that program, but we can double check on that.

I believe that that's the case though.

Thank you.

I'd appreciate the follow-up by you now.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any other questions or comments for Leslie?

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Council Member Herbold, for asking those transportation questions.

So I just have one remaining question.

It's about the foreclosure moratorium.

Is that, and this is something you can get back to us on, is that just for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, or is that also impacting mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and then is it also, a moratorium on foreclosures for those not backed by FHA, Fannie or Freddie.

Let us get back to you on exactly to make sure that we're saying, giving you exactly the right information.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Morales.

Sorry, my question was also about how mortgages would be affected here.

I want to make sure as we've got evictions looming that we're doing everything we can to protect our renters and also knowing that our small landlords are struggling because they're not collecting rent.

So it would be helpful to get that information.

Thank you.

Thanks to both of you for thinking of that line of question.

We really appreciate it.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments for Leslie or Sierra?

Madam President, I have a question.

Go ahead, Council Member Lewis, please.

Thank you.

I just wanted to pivot back First off, I'm looking much more forward to these federal briefings now, change in administration.

But looking forward, because I know that when we met, you know, in person last year, that's how we know how long ago it was.

and talked a little bit about conversations in Congress around an infrastructure plan, which you alluded to a little in answering Council Member Herbold's question.

Is there any indication yet in what the timeline for that might be and what the focus of that might be that we can glean this early in the process, knowing that that will you know, probably gel down the road, but things we can do to maybe influence that process and get Seattle priorities kind of baked into the shape of what that infrastructure bill looks like is something I'd be very interested in.

So I just want to maybe if you have a few more thoughts to expand on that, um, conceding that it is still early.

No, absolutely.

I think it's a great question.

Um, so Part of it, of course, the timeline is going to depend on how long it takes this coronavirus relief package to actually get through, recognizing that they're trying to do a really ambitious timeframe.

They will also, the Biden administration is likely to release something, they've said, in the coming weeks.

So they are very committed to trying to move something quickly as well, recognizing that it's going to be a core part of how we bring about economic recovery.

is going to be very, very climate-driven.

And so we expect to see sort of a real climate lens and then also an equity lens applied to their priorities.

One starting place, and the House leadership has alluded to this, is the Moving America Forward Act, which the House passed last summer.

And that's a fairly comprehensive piece of legislation.

It starts with surface transportation reauthorization, but then it includes a number of energy and climate related issues.

It includes broadband investment.

And that's an area that we, you know, we've been looking at with, with city departments to identify, you know, what, what do we like in there?

And then what's missing?

What do we need to amplify?

And what do we need, what gaps do we need to fill?

And so we've been looking really closely at that, but that is a place that is where I think the house will probably start their efforts as well and try to fuse that with the Biden plan.

Great, thank you.

Very much looking forward to those discussions this year.

Absolutely.

And we can send you, if you have not already seen it, we can certainly send you a summary of the House Moving America Forward Act.

I would love that.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Great.

Thank you so much for that, Council Member Lewis.

Any other questions or comments, colleagues?

Sierra, you mentioned that you emailed us some information for feedback and consideration.

Can you let us know by when you would like to get some feedback on that?

By the end of this week would be great.

Okay.

Yeah.

And like I said, it is an iterative document, so we can make updates throughout this Congress, and we usually do a larger process for every new Congress, and then in the interim years do just a check-in and update.

Great, okay.

Looks like no one else has any comments or questions on the federal lobbying agenda, so I'm going to say thank you to Leslie for being with us and to Sierra for your ongoing hard work on all of these issues.

Certainly a breath of fresh air, a much more optimistic opportunity for cities like Seattle and cities across the country to be able to find a partner in the federal government again is very welcome news and a welcome change.

So thank you, Leslie, for being with us.

And as usual, folks are welcome to contact Leslie and Sierra offline on issues of priority for you in your office.

All right.

We're going to go ahead and shift gears now.

Thanks, Leslie.

Thanks, Sierra.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Okay, folks, let's go ahead and move to our fourth agenda item, which is the state legislative session update.

And we have members of our Office of Intergovernmental Relations here with us, too.

So I'm going to hand it over to you all to introduce yourselves.

And if you can popcorn to each other for introductions, that would be great.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and I'm going to pass it to Robin.

Robin Kosky, Deputy Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and I will pass it to Quinn.

Robin Majewski, State Relations Director, OIR.

I'll pass it to Hannah.

Hannah Smith, Government Affairs Program Director, OIR.

All right.

Well, thanks for being back with us again.

This is our weekly update on the state legislative session.

We are now, what, in the second week?

Third week.

Third week.

Third week.

I stand corrected.

Time moves slow and fast sometimes.

So I'm going to hand it over to Lily to walk us through this presentation and to the other members of the OIR team.

Welcome.

Thank you, Council President, Council Members.

As Council President Gonzalez mentioned, we are moving into the third week of the 2021 legislative session.

recognizing the need for us to move quickly through our state report today, given the great briefing we just received from our federal team on the Biden administration's first 100-day actions and the American Rescue Plan moving its way through Congress.

I'm going to first ask Quinn to begin with an overview of House Bill 1368 and Senate Bill 5344, which is legislation allocating the over $2 billion in federal assistance from the last omnibus relief package that passed Congress earlier in December that the federal team just reviewed.

So we'll spend the remainder of our briefing with you then quickly reviewing individual state lobbyist portfolios, touching on the council's budget and revenue, transportation, criminal justice, police reform, housing, and public health priorities.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Quinn Majewski, our state relations director.

Thank you so much, Lily.

Thank you council members for having us here this morning.

As Lily mentioned, I'm going to start providing an overview of what we're calling and what most folks are calling the early action bill on COVID-19 response and relief.

These are federal dollars that have come to the state and are being appropriated and doled out here.

As Lily mentioned, it is 2.2, approximately 2.2 billion from the Coronavirus Relief Fund CARES Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplement.

And I will, there's a lot here.

I'll provide a high level overview and try to touch on the most salient points.

And then if there are any questions or additional information, we will get to those as deeply as we can given our limited time here.

But to start out, There is $365 million for rental assistance and housing.

The bulk of that is $325 million for emergency rent and utility assistance that's granted out to local housing providers.

There's $30 million in eviction rental assistance, $16 million of which must be subgranted to community organizations serving historically disadvantaged populations.

4,000,000 for homeowner foreclosure assistance and an assortment of other funds for civil legal aid dispute resolution and for the attorney general to provide legal work related to the eviction moratorium.

Continuing on, there's $240 million for Working Washington Small Business Grants.

This is divided evenly between $120 million for businesses who are currently open to maintain their operations and another $120 million to provide aid to businesses that have closed to subsequently reopen safely.

This money is available for small businesses making less than $5 million in gross receipts in 2019. It's available on a first-come, first-served basis with prioritization for applicants that have not already received a grant.

Businesses are eligible for up to $20,000 per grant, although this eligibility is reduced if they've received previous Work in Washington grants.

There is $24.6 million for developmental disabilities program and $45.4 million for aging and adult services.

These continue the rate enhancements that were made as part of the COVID-19 response, so just continuing the current level of expanded service there.

There's $90 million in economic services administration, which is basically a series of assistance programs.

That includes $12 million for disaster cash assistance relief, $4.7 million for increased food assistance benefits, $9 million for TANF caseload increases, and $65 million for the Washington Immigrant Relief Fund.

which was started over the summer, so continuing to expand that program.

There's $6 million for health care authority medical assistance.

That's largely for rural health care providers, so I'm going to skip over that because it doesn't largely affect the city.

There's $50 million for early learning and child care.

This includes $28 million for license providers who accept state subsidies and $6 million for those who do not.

There's also $10.6 million for providers for regional preschool rate programs, $4 million for providers to take on new subsidized slots, as there's often a difficulty in the budgeting process for providers to take on subsidized SOTS, so some additional incentives there.

There's $26.4 million in food assistance.

This is block grants to hunger and relief organizations.

There's $668 million, so the The largest single allocation for elementary and secondary school emergency relief funding.

This is also granted out to local education agencies to support the education system and providing additional resources for teachers and students.

There's also 4.6 million associated for a similar effort for private schools.

And then the bulk of the remaining is allocated for a variety of direct public health response to the pandemic.

There's 438 million for the overall statewide pandemic response, including diagnostic testing, case investigations, contact tracing, care coordination, outbreak response, and data collection and analysis.

68 million for preparation and deployment of vaccines.

100 million for epidemiology and lab testing capacity.

And then finally, 12 million directly allocated to the Department of Health to coordinate statewide response.

I know that's a lot of numbers, and I'm happy to provide or have Robin and Hana, who have expertise in some of these individual areas, to provide additional information.

But That is the high-level overview of what is in the legislation.

We do anticipate there is a hearing this week, and as we mentioned, this is slated to be early action by the legislature, so we're expecting them to move pretty quickly on this.

Thank you, Quinn.

Certainly a very strong start, I think, and looking forward to continuing to see how this package evolves and want to appreciate the leadership in the state legislature for pulling together such an initial first strong proposal in this space to meet the needs of our families.

Colleagues, any questions or comments for Quinn?

All right, hearing none, let's go ahead and continue on with the report.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Council President.

That is all for the budget and revenue space.

So I'm going to actually hand it over to Hana to cover education.

All right, go ahead, Hannah.

Thank you.

A couple bills to highlight on the education section.

Scroll down.

The first is 5136. That's a child care licensing fee by Senator Wilson, and that will prohibit the Department of Children, Youth and Family Services from charging a fee to obtain a child care license.

Currently, a family home provider pays $30 a year and child care centers pay 125 for the first 12 children and $12 for each additional child.

So this will lower the barrier for new child care providers.

Additionally, I want to touch on House Bill 1213 or Senate Bill 5237 of the Fair Starts for Kids Act.

And this is an omnibus child care bill that we're tracking closely here.

It increases subsidy rate for providers, lowers the copay for the working connections child care for families, Eligibility expands early childhood education and assistance program and provides capital investments in childcare facilities.

It had a hearing last week and is scheduled for executive session on the 27th.

And scrolling down the education section, a couple expansions in scholarship programs.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program, Senate Bill 5288 by Senator Leas, adds non-credit programs that provide a license or professional certification to a list of programs students can use the scholarship toward.

And expanding the college-bound program by Senator Nobles removes some of the barriers by adding ninth grade to the years of eligibility and expands the pledge that students sign through 11th grade instead of ninth grade, just adding the years that students throughout Washington can become eligible for that, as well as removing a C average.

That's it for education.

I'll pause for questions before we move on.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on that report.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you so much.

I think this would be faster than going to lynch.Y.

Does Representative Sen's bill have bipartisan support?

I believe it does.

Excellent.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Very excited about that.

Agreed.

Okay.

Awesome.

Take it away, Hannah.

I am done there if Quinn wants to jump in on environment.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Hannah.

A couple updates in the environmental space.

Last week, there were hearings on the governor's Climate Commitment Act, 5126, as well as the governor's Healthy Homes, Clean Buildings, 1084. Both of those attracted sort of a, as you would expect for high profile legislation, a wide range of thoughts and opinions and public comments.

We're monitoring them closely and believe we expect that the sponsors of the legislative sponsors of both bills are working on proposed substitutes to incorporate some of the feedback that they have heard.

So looking forward to those potentially later this week or the following week.

There will be a committee vote this week on 1075, which is the TNC emission reduction legislation.

I think we might see some small changes there, but nothing significant.

And then finally, the Clean Fuel Standard House Bill 1091 was voted out of committee.

There was a proposed substitute that makes a sort of array of, I won't say technical but complex changes around the impacts to electric utilities and we're working with our wonderful electric utility to understand those specific impacts for us.

You know, largely Seattle City Light would be a beneficiary of the clean fuel standard.

And given the sponsor of the legislation, I don't expect that any of these changes would be of significant concern to us.

But I'm happy to report back on that.

And I will pause there for questions.

Colleagues, any questions on this section?

Looks like we can keep going.

All right, moving on to general government, just a few updates here.

House Bill 1016, you may recall this bill was introduced last year and ultimately didn't make it, but establishing Juneteenth as a legal holiday.

This was voted out of committee last Wednesday, and so it will move to the House floor, obviously monitoring closely and looking for opportunities to support.

House Bill 1056 is the legislation that essentially makes permanent the temporary changes that were made to the Open Public Meetings Act requirements and online meetings through the governor's proclamation.

So for any future declared emergencies, we would have a set of regulations in place.

The current regulations have already standardized for the duration of this emergency, but for any future emergencies, we would have this framework.

The House passed that with a 98 to 0 vote, so it's got a strong path over towards the Senate.

Hopefully we can see that adopted so we have some certainty moving forward.

One built a flag that was just introduced in their intervening time between our last briefing is House Bill 1258, which is the micro enterprise home kitchen.

I believe this is of interest last year, and we're looking for looking forward to the opportunity to weigh in on the 29th.

I'm happy to work with any of your offices if that is of interest.

And then finally, a flag Senate Bill 5061, which modifies the unemployment insurance program to ensure that individuals who are high risk or who live with someone who is high risk, who voluntarily quit their jobs during a public health emergency, If they can't work from home, qualify for unemployment insurance.

It essentially makes it a good-cause quit.

That was moved out of committee on the 18th, not quite on a party-line vote.

There were a few Republicans in support, but continuing to track that as it moves to the Senate floor.

I will pause there on general government for any questions.

Any questions or comments, colleagues?

I appreciate the legislature's response to the Open Public Meetings Act issues.

We've been having regular contacts with the governor's office around a lot of those issues, and I think it really just helps us continue to do our business in the safest way possible, consistent with the governor's order.

So hopefully we can continue to be supportive of those efforts.

Absolutely.

Okay, I will hand it off to Hana on healthcare.

Thanks.

Starting on health care, I want to talk about House Bill 1152 or Senate Bill 5173. That's a comprehensive public health district bill.

It's a governor request bill, and it creates a work group to determine funding for comprehensive health districts for cities, counties, and the state.

Currently, the Washington state has over 35 local health jurisdictions, and the bill would look to regionalize them.

Counties with populations over 1 million can be considered a comprehensive public health district without joining along with any counties.

So that includes our Seattle King County Public Health.

But we're continuing to monitor the impacts that would have on us.

And the bill had a hearing last Thursday.

Also, Senate Bill 5129. is vapor and tobacco products for minors, sponsored by Senator Saldana.

The bill would repeal civic infractions prohibiting the purchase or possession of tobacco products or vapor products for anyone under the age of 18. It also removes the authority of officers to detain a person purchasing or possessing tobacco products and removes the authority of law enforcement and the Liquoring Candidates Board from seizing those products from anyone under the age of 18. And another one to flag on health care that I was interested in last year was Senate Bill 5195, and that's the opioid overdose medication by Senator Elias.

This requires a hospital emergency department to disperse, dispense opioid reversal medication to a patient and requires residential or outpatient substance use disorder treatment providers to prescribe overdose reversal medication as well.

And it had a hearing last week and is scheduled for an executive session on Friday.

Those are the big bills on healthcare that I wanted to flag and open to any questions.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on these issues?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

There was an email that many of us received from public health.

Anybody who sits on the Board of Health, I'm happy to share it around with colleagues.

I don't have it pulled up in front of me, but Director Patty Hayes had provided a written summary because we weren't able to get to her update last week.

And at the very bottom of a lengthy report on all of the things public health is working on, is, um, a comment about t of overdoses, overdoses, related to drugs that are be You know, I just want to take a moment to call out the importance of this work and also signal my interest to OIR if there's any way that I can help provide additional support on these bills.

I just want to applaud the legislators who are taking this issue on.

This is the second or maybe the third public health crisis that's compounding right now as people look to potentially dull the pain of losing loved ones or not having a job or the worry that they face from not being able to pay rent or their mortgage.

I know folks who have lost people in their families due to overdose in the last year and people who have also had not been using for a very long time.

And if somebody gets any product that has fentanyl on it and also their body is not, you know, I guess, used to that kind of substance and they're turning to it because they're trying to self-medicate in these really stressful times.

We're losing people and not just to COVID right now.

So I just wanted to call out the importance of this effort and to also say to any of the families and individuals out there struggling right now, I recognize that this is a public health crisis that was already present before COVID.

And in many ways, the compounding stressors of COVID is just causing people to look for additional ways to relieve stress and We will continue to fight to make sure that we get the funding that we need.

And I want to applaud our state legislators.

And as we heard as well from the federal partners, mental health and substance abuse funding has dramatically decreased over the last few decades.

And I'm optimistic that we can get additional support, but just calling out the public health crisis that's driving some of this legislation so that people know that we're paying attention and that we, I think we want to be good partners in deploying these resources ASAP.

Let me know how I can help on this.

And if it looks like these aren't going sideways in any way, I'd love to echo our support as a city for this support.

Thank you, Council Member.

We will definitely follow up with any opportunities to engage and appreciate your support on this issue.

Hannah, on this suite of bills, one of the things that also continues to be a really significant issue in the city is the, is, is, um, and I know opioids gets, heroin in particular, gets a lot of attention at the state level and federal level, uh, in King County and in Seattle, um, uh, meth continues to be, um, a leading driver for deaths as well.

And just wondering if there's any conversations at the state legislature around addressing that particular, um, um, you know, particular interventions for that particular substance use and an illness.

That's a really great point, Council President.

I will follow up to see if there's any bills that we've missed on this and definitely look forward to engaging in that conversation because that's an important piece of this as well.

Yeah, I think it's really important to make sure that our state legislative partners, in addition to advancing this work, are also giving us the local jurisdictions the flexibility to address other prevalent types of substances that are resulting in increased levels of death within our community.

So I think meth is right up there.

And I think that I seem to recall that the information that the Public Health Board sent to us sort of made highlighted that as an issue.

I know that there was an article over the weekend in the Seattle Times that talked about that nuance in terms of some of the federal funding and priorities that we're seeing from the Biden-Harris administration and how there may be some gaps as it relates to how substance use plays out in our local community here in King County.

So would love to continue to have conversations about that and make sure that we're lifting up that need as well with the legislature to ensure that those needs are going to be met.

definitely.

Council Member Morales, I see that you have your hand up, please.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Hannah.

I have a question about Senator Dinklage's bill 5209. Do you know, or is there any conversation happening around expanding these crisis hotlines, suicide prevention services, or really just mental health services that are culturally appropriate?

And I ask because there are a lot of folks in South Seattle, in South King County, particularly right now, anyway, in the East African community who are looking for mental health services that are culturally relevant and are really struggling to find ways to provide access to services that are responsive to people who don't speak English as a first language or who just come from from different communities, different cultures, and who still need appropriate mental health services.

So I'm interested to know if this bill or if there are other bills that might be addressing that need in our communities.

I'm happy to follow up with you on the specifics of that.

I know they're looking to make them community-based, but the point very well taken on the language and the needs specifically of some of the community members in South Seattle.

So happy to follow up and advocate for that.

Thank you.

Great, okay.

Let's keep going.

We have about 10 minutes left here.

I believe housing is the next item.

I'm going to be real brief on this section today.

I know many of you are interested in how we provide tenant protections as the eviction moratorium, both at the state and local levels, may come to an end.

And just letting you know, I'm monitoring those, but nothing substantial happened with those bills this week.

did want to highlight House Bill 1277 and Senate Bill 5279, which is on the top of page 7. That would make a $100 increase in the document recording fees and raise at least $100 million, and probably a little bit more given the number of housing transactions that are happening right now.

That will be mostly focused on rent assistance at least in the first biennium.

It had a hearing last Friday in the house and is scheduled for executive session this week.

If there are no questions on housing, I can immediately just shift to police reform.

Any questions, colleagues?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you so much.

Robin, just very briefly, can you point us to any of the legislation we should be tracking if it includes additional assistance or push towards strategic acquisition opportunities?

We know.

Yes, actually, that bill comes from a skater.

Thank you for asking is 1070. That would give King County the ability through the health through housing sales tax to acquire buildings.

We are following that.

That actually has a hearing today.

We signed in in favor of it.

Had a very nice suite of supporters from all around King County and many suburban cities.

And I apologize that it didn't get into the bulletin.

We'll make sure it's in there next week so you can track its progress.

No problem.

Thanks so much.

Colleagues, the Seattle Housing Authority provided a quick presentation in my committee last week.

Just want to flag this is an excellent opportunity for us to engage in strategic acquisition, especially as we look at two, three, four bedroom opportunities that are coming onto the market.

And for local jurisdictions to be able to purchase those is a really great way for us to preserve affordable housing, but also to make more housing available.

And it's a win-win for those small building owners who might have a derelict situation given the economic crisis.

So huge opportunity.

Glad King County is helping to support and thanks to Claudia Balducci, the chair of our regional housing effort for helping to make sure this is on folks radar and looking forward to supporting in any way.

Robin.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So now I will just switch on to police reform.

There's over 20 bills at the legislature right now on police reform, so it's a bit staggering to track all of them.

I just wanted to point to a couple of things that are happening this week.

There's a new use of force bill that was dropped last week, House Bill 1310 by Representative Johnson, that creates a reasonable care standard for when officers may use force.

That bill is being heard on Friday.

The independent investigations bill, which is the governor's task force recommendations on creating a state centralized agency to do investigations when force is used.

That has a hearing tomorrow and house public safety.

So that's a very important bill that, of course, we're keeping an eye on.

And then also this week.

There will be House Bill 1203, sorry, Hannah, I'm skipping around a little bit, also has a hearing tomorrow.

We're just monitoring that bill because we want to make sure that our accountability ordinance is aligned with whatever that bill may recommend when it comes out of committee.

So just keeping a close eye on that one.

That is my presentation on police reform, if anyone has questions.

Colleagues, any comments or questions?

Customer Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Question is about a couple of different bills, trying to figure out which one is stronger on police reform.

It would seem that Senator Solomon's bill, SB 5134, is stronger on police accountability than SB 5055 because SB 5134 gets rid of the arbitration appeal process that has historically allowed bad cops to be reinstated to their jobs.

Are you foreseeing some sort of reconciliation between those two bills or one succeeding over the other?

We're certainly advocating for some, at the very least, if a bill does not move forward that eliminates arbitration for a bill that would put some guardrails around arbitration.

So we're actively advocating for that.

And we are hopeful that either a new vehicle could be introduced or that there would be an amendment to one of those bills in committee.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you.

Just a little bit more information as relates to Council Member Peterson's question.

Just to be 100% clear, myself and Mayor Durkan signed in in favor of both bills when we gave testimony a week before last, and I wholeheartedly concur with Robin's statement.

The bill that should move forward is one that I think allows Seattle the flexibility to pursue significant reforms in arbitration, if not get rid of arbitration altogether.

And there are additional things that should the win bill move forward that we should continue to advocate for.

I have a short list of items that the mayor's office and myself have been promoting together with OIR and discussing directly with our state legislators.

And then as it relates to the Johnson bill, the sometimes known as the ACLU bill.

If that vehicle doesn't move forward because it eliminates arbitration, there's a lot in that bill that should move forward.

And I really hope that the sponsors and the stakeholders You know, really go through that that ACLU bill, because I think there are some things that stakeholders who don't agree about getting rid of arbitration can agree about in that bill.

And again, I've got a sort of a short list of things that I'd be happy to share.

with you, Council Member Peterson, as it relates to, like, let's not just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Let's figure out how to, as you say, some reconciliation with the two bills.

But I do have a question about one of the bills coming up this week, specifically the bill related to police oversight entities.

That's 1203. I understand that in a large part it combines the functions of the OPA and the OIG.

And just there's language that says any community oversight board must comply by January 1st, 2020 with the requirements of the bill.

But there's language that says except when full compliance would violate a federal consent decree.

Is that intended to sort of give Seattle the flexibility to maintain our own current oversight structure that has the three legs with civilians leading each of the three legs?

It does exactly.

I think that's what it is intended to do, although we do have some concern because in the event that the consent decree is no longer in effect, then we want to make sure that we have some additional language that would, you know, make sure that we're not needing to re overhaul our accountability system once the consent decree is lifted.

So we're looking into that to make sure there's alignment there.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

All right, let's keep going.

Just wanted to quickly highlight that there is quite a big hearing today on the public safety field.

Senate Bill 5078, which is at the bottom of page 10, that would ban high capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds.

And that's being heard this morning in the Senate Law and Justice Committee.

There's also an open carry of weapons bill, Senate Bill 5038, that would prohibit open carry while attending a public demonstration.

There's a hearing on Tuesday in the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee, and Chief Diaz is going to be testifying in support of that bill.

Finally, there's a civil protection order bill, which is House Bill 1320 and Senate Bill 5297. This aligns and simplifies the six different types of protection orders that we have in Washington state.

A lot of work over the summer went into some very technical legislation to create this alignment.

And that has a hearing this Wednesday on the Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee.

And that was all that I had today on public safety.

Great, thank you so much, Robin.

All right, does that take us through the full presentation or do we got a couple more we gotta wrap up?

Just really quickly, I'll jump to the safety net and civil rights, just a couple here.

One is Senate Bill 5023, that's Child Care Eligibility and Unemployment Benefits.

And that just prohibits the Department of Children, Youth, and Families from counting any COVID-related unemployment benefits when determining eligibility for the co-payment for working connections to child care.

And one more to flag way down at the bottom is a new bill by Senator Nguyen, and that is Senate Bill 5214. And what that does is really expands TANF back before the pre-recession, a lot of the eligibility requirements were changed.

So this is working to expand, extend beyond 60 months for those who need it, and increase the earned income set aside, allowing families on TANF to save a lot more of their income rather than be excluded based on that.

It establishes telephone orientations, reducing that barrier for folks needing to attend in person.

So that is it on safety net.

And then I think Quinn has one quick transportation, knowing that we are right up at time.

Yeah, understanding that we are basically at our time here, I would just note that Representative Fai, who's the chair of the House Transportation Committee, released a framework for his transportation revenue package last week.

As alluded to, there were not specific projects identified at this point, however, We anticipate that a project list will be built out as negotiations unfold between the House and the Senate.

We expect that Senator Hobbs will be releasing an update of his proposal in the next week, most likely.

That, too, we have heard is unlikely to include a project list.

Legislators are holding their cards close to their chest and keeping points of negotiation open.

We will look forward to seeing what that entails, but similarly have heard that there will not likely be a project list.

In the interest of time, I'm not going to go through all of the details of Representative Fai's package, but I will send out a e-mail summary to all the council members and I'm happy to follow up with anyone who is interested.

Great.

Thank you so much, Quinn.

Appreciate that.

Anything else from OIR?

That concludes our presentation today.

Thank you.

Great.

Perfect.

Okay, colleagues, we are a little over time here, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap us up, of course.

Any needed follow-up can be done directly with OIR, so please do not hesitate to reach out to them directly.

We are going to go ahead and begin the process of doing the preview of today's city council actions, council and regional actions.

Thank you so much to OIR folks for being with us.

We appreciate it.

We are going to begin our discussion now of the City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

I'll call on Council Members as established by the rotated roll call.

As a reminder, that order is as follows.

Council Member Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, Juarez, and then I will conclude this section.

We do have Karina Bull with us this morning.

She will be here to make just a quick presentation on Councilmember Mosqueda's hazard pay legislation, and then we will go ahead and hear from Councilmember Mosqueda on her legislation in that order.

So we'll go ahead and wait, Karina, to take you up until we get to Councilmember Mosqueda's report, which is the third report this morning.

So for now, we'll go ahead and start with Councilmember Lewis and then hear from Councilmember Morales.

Thank you, Madam President.

Appreciate first the opportunity to hear from our federal delegation this morning, or federal lobbying delegation in particular.

It is just so encouraging to really be in a new world of partnership with the other Washington.

There are no items on this afternoon's agenda from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I do look forward to voting this afternoon on the hazard pay for grocery workers.

I was in my local grocery store the other day and had the great pleasure of seeing a checker wearing a sticker advocating for the campaign, so good job UFCW.

I really appreciate the solidarity and all of the hard work that our brothers and sisters in labor have put into bringing this proposal forward.

And I was proud to co-sponsor this legislation last week in the Finance Committee and look forward to voting for it on final passage today.

As was foreshadowed in yesterday's Danny Wesny column, my office will be kicking off an effort this afternoon to ambitiously scale tiny house villages in 2021. This collaborative effort between business, nonprofits, providers, and neighborhood stakeholders will lead to a surge of tiny houses to finally give a scalable offer of shelter to our neighborhoods experiencing homelessness.

And this has been no more urgent than a week where we anticipate potential snowfall.

2021 can be the year that we come together as a city government to solve the crisis of our homelessness emergency with four walls and a door that locks, as my colleague Councilmember Strauss often says.

It can be the year where we recognize our common interest in providing people living in tents, a safe, hygienic, and warm place to live, while we do the hard work at the same time of scaling permanent supportive housing and other housing-based initiatives to respond to the crisis of homelessness.

Only that permanent supportive housing or permanent housing can truly solve homelessness.

Shelter options like tiny houses and hotels are only a temporary living situation.

But this crisis cannot wait until we have realized the five-year or longer goal of scaling permanent supportive housing regionally.

People don't need shelter in the long run.

People need shelter right now.

I'll be sharing more details on this initiative at noon, where I'll be joined by representatives from the Low Income Housing Institute, the Downtown Seattle Association, the Southlake Union Chamber of Commerce, and other stakeholders who have pledged private resources to support this effort, and look forward to working with everyone here on the council over this year to join in our shared goal of scaling all sorts of shelter options, including tiny houses.

So with that, I think I'll leave the rest of it till after briefing and my press event at noon.

But I appreciate the ability to share that.

I appreciate Danny Westney sort of getting the ball rolling on it with some favorable coverage yesterday in his column, and really look forward to 2021 being a year where we boldly respond to our homelessness crisis in Seattle.

And with that, I have no further updates, Madam President.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and go down the line.

Next up is Council Member Morales, and then we will hear from Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning.

Good morning, colleagues.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on today's agenda.

We did meet last Friday and approved 17 appointments for various commissions, so those will be coming before full council next Monday on the 1st.

Last week, I attended the Board of Health meeting, as Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, and want to say we know that our neighbors are really frustrated with the rollout of the vaccines.

So I want to acknowledge that there were some computer glitches.

There's sort of a confusing array of tiers of eligibility, and we want to just be clear that right now that we're focused on vaccinations for elders in the community and for folks who are frontline health care workers, home health care workers, to make sure that they get access.

So we also do know that we need to get information out that is for non-English speakers and we need to be creating the infrastructure for more easily accessible sites, particularly in South Seattle and South King County.

So there's certainly several things that we need to be doing, but I want to make sure that our community understands that the real challenge right now is we just don't have enough supply of the vaccines.

What we learned in that meeting is that the county is receiving anywhere from 12,000 to 73,000 doses per week.

It's really fluctuating and that range makes it really hard for our public health workers to anticipate how many vaccinations they'll be able to do in any given week, in any given day.

It also makes it really hard to schedule staff, to schedule appointments.

So this is kind of what happens when we don't have a national plan for how to roll out a vaccine.

But thankfully now we will be ramping up production.

President Biden has indicated that he, well, he's invoked anyway, the Defense Production Act.

So we may be getting more supply, more vaccines.

All of that should become more predictable over time.

So I will add that I have scheduled a follow-up meeting with Director Hayes.

In South Seattle, we know that we have lots of folks who still don't have the internet, and right now that's how people are checking to see if they're eligible.

We have a lot of folks who don't speak English as a first language.

So while we wait to ramp up the predictability, sufficient quantities of the vaccine, I'm hoping to meet with her and understand better what we're doing to establish the infrastructure that we need to get more information out, to get more easily accessible sites set up so that eventually those folks will have access in the language they understand in a way that they can get the information.

So I'm happy to update once I have a chance to have that conversation with Director Pace.

Later this week, I'll be speaking at the big old Jewish climate fest in anticipation of Tu B'Shvat, which is sort of the Jewish Earth Day.

I've been asked to join a panel and I'm excited that I'll be speaking with council members from across the country, from Boston and LA and New York City.

We'll be speaking together on a panel about the role that cities will play in addressing climate change.

So I'm looking forward to that.

And finally, I wanna acknowledge the very disturbing revelation that we had last week about Council Member Sawant receiving death threats.

As elected officials, we've all experienced hate mail and lots of other things, but this year there has been a dangerous escalation of expression that goes way beyond free speech.

And I know the women on this council have the, Special experience of receiving crude and misogynistic voice messages that very often include threats of sexual violence.

I will say that over recess, my husband received a letter in the mail of pornographic images with my face pasted over them.

So we understand that those of us who are called to public service will be targets of all manner of divisiveness and hate.

But when council members have their windows broken, their parents accosted, and when actual violence is threatened, that crosses a line.

And repeated threats are caused not just for harm, but for action.

So I'm glad to know that the fire department and the police department are investigating the threats that council members so want to experience last week.

And I expect that this council will be briefed, not just on those investigations, but on the investigations of the five SPD officers who were present at the insurrection on January 6th.

We can't let this escalation go unchecked.

And we won't let these attempts to silence us keep us, keep this council from doing the people's work.

I want to close by quoting our future president, Amanda Gorman, who so eloquently spoke at President Biden's inauguration when she said, we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.

With that, Council President, I will conclude my report.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for those closing remarks and for your report.

Really, really appreciate it.

Colleagues, any comments or questions related to that report?

Okay.

Hearing none, we are going to go ahead and continue down the line here.

Colleagues, as I mentioned at the top of this agenda section, we did invite Karina Bull from our council central staff to join us in council briefing this morning so that the council members who are not members of Council Member Mosqueda's Finance and Housing Committee have the benefit of just getting a general overview from Council Central staff about the hazard pay legislation that we will be voting on this afternoon at full council.

It did receive unanimous support from all members of the Finance and Housing Committee, and I'm sure Council Member Mosqueda is going to have lots to add and say about the policy and the legislative intent behind the policy.

But I did wanna give Karina just a quick opportunity to give us that briefing with Council Member Mosqueda's permission.

Would be happy to have her do that now or immediately before or sort of take a pause in your presentation on other matters.

Council Member Mosqueda to hear from Karina, how would you like to proceed?

Karina, if you are interested in providing an overview, I think that would be fine.

I have some more of the, you know, comments about the intent and the discussions we had and what's going on in other jurisdictions and some feedback about the why in certain circumstances.

Council President, I'll be happy to provide those after Karina provides an overview of the legislation, if that sounds good.

And I am Karina and he doesn't have to be as sort of lengthy as it was in committee, just a quick sort of overview of of the, the, the fun of how the, the legislation functions.

And then I'm sure council members data will do a very fine job of filling in the context and adding more more texture there.

So.

With that being said, Carina, go ahead and give us that quick presentation, and then we will shift over to Council Member Mosqueda.

And then, Carina, if you could just hang tight during council briefing in the event that there are any questions that come up after people have had the benefit of hearing your presentation and Council Member Mosqueda's presentation, then I think we will be set.

So take it away, Carina.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

In the description of the hazard pay for grocery employees legislation, at the heart of this law is a requirement for grocery businesses to provide their employees with hazard pay of $4 per each hour worked in Seattle during the COVID-19 emergency.

And since it is emergency legislation, it would have an immediately effective date.

Coverage would be on employees who are covered by Seattle's minimum wage ordinance and who work in Seattle at a retail location of a grocery business.

And grocery businesses are defined as those that have 500 or more employees worldwide.

That includes count of employees in any franchise network.

And a grocery business would be either a store with 10,000 square feet or more, primarily engaged in retailing groceries, or also a store with over 85,000 square feet with 30% or more of its sales floor area selling groceries.

So that would include a store that is selling general merchandise and groceries are one of its many items that it is selling.

The legislation explicitly does not cover convenience stores or food marts or farmers markets.

The hazard pay requirements, as I mentioned earlier, would be $4 for each hour worked in Seattle.

This pay would be on top of their other compensation, such as wages or bonuses for things that are not COVID-related.

There is an explicit prohibition on reducing an employee's compensation to provide the hazard pay, and employers would need to keep a record to establish the reason for any reduction in compensation that might happen.

While this ordinance is in effect, There is recognition that some employers are paying their employees the equivalent of a hazard pay.

It might go by a different name, but it is above their regular wages.

So the legislation does allow employers to count that amount of appreciation pay towards their hazard pay requirements.

At the end, they still employers would still need to pay the sum total of $4 an hour, it would need to comply with some basic record keeping requirements to show that they are fulfilling their obligation.

Hazard pay would not be included in an employee's paid sick and safe time pay.

And as is common with other labor standards, employers would be displaying a notice of rights, they'd have three years of record keeping, and the Office of Labor Standards would be enforcing this law, and employees would also have a private right of action.

This law would be, in effect, as currently written, through the end of the COVID-19 emergency.

Although the recitals do state council's intent to reconsider whether the requirements are necessary for more months after it's been in effect.

And within four months, there is hope that grocery store employees will be vaccinated.

But since there's no secure knowledge in what the virus will be, how it'll be affecting the community at that time, that is just an intention to come back in four months.

That's a basic overview of the law, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Karina.

That was perfect.

Appreciate the succinct description of the ordinance.

I'm going to hand it over to Council Member Mosqueda, who is the prime sponsor of legislation.

And then, Council Member Mosqueda, if at the end of your remarks about the hazard pay, if you could just take a quick pause so that we can allow other council members an opportunity to ask questions and then release Karina so she can go do all the other important work we've asked her to do.

That would be super.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council President, and thanks, Karina, for being here with us today.

Colleagues, as you heard on today's agenda, item number 19 is where we will take up Substitute Council Bill 119990. This is the emergency and hazard pay legislation meant to protect our public health and safety and welfare of our entire community.

And that means protecting the public health and safety of grocery store workers explicitly.

This will help declare a emergency in response to COVID and require grocery store businesses to provide employees with hazard pay for work performed in Seattle during this time of the civil emergency claimed by the mayor.

The hazard pay would compensate employees for the risk of going to the front lines every single day in this time of a global pandemic.

It helps to improve the financial ability for them to be able to have resources to provide for safe housing for healthy, healthy environment and encourage them to continue their vital work in grocery stores to support the health and welfare of the greater community that is depending on grocery store employees for safe and reliable access to food and goods.

I appreciate Karina's walk-through.

I also want to note my appreciation for the colleagues on the Finance and Housing Committee who have all in that meeting spoken up to ask to be co-sponsors.

Thank you, Council Members Lewis, Vice Chair Herbold, Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Strauss for your co-sponsorship and your support and discussion on this bill.

I'm proud to be introducing this legislation with all of you and look forward to additional support.

If there is any other council members who'd like to add their name, I would be happy to do so.

This is part of our effort to make sure that those who are on the front line in our communities are able to stay healthy and are being respected in terms of their workplaces to compensate them for the essential work that they are doing.

Early on, many folks know that some of these employers did offer a form of hazard pay.

There is a chart that shows when that hazard pay actually was cut off.

But the chart shows that employers were offering somewhere between $2 to $5 extra per hour at the beginning of this pandemic.

And folks, some people have asked, well, why?

Let me just close this window behind me.

There you go.

Can you see me better now?

Okay.

Folks have asked perhaps, why do $4 an hour right now?

It is important to know that about $4 is where other jurisdictions are also landing.

It is between the $2 and $5 amount that was originally offered by some of the employers.

And if an average grocery store wage is somewhere right now between $16 an hour to $20 an hour, and the average shift is about four to six hours, Getting an extra $4 an hour roughly leaves the workers with an extra hour and an hour and a half of pay added to each shift.

This seems like the right amount of compensation.

It seems like it is a completely reasonable amount of compensation for the extra work that they are taking on right now, sanitizing and cleaning, stocking shelves at tremendously high rates and putting themselves in Some others have asked about why grocery store workers right now?

Why not other areas?

And I think beyond some of the more immediate testimony that we heard on Friday, which I'm happy to lift up as well, it's important to look at the data we have.

data that shows that grocery store workers who are on the floor are facing higher rates of exposure to COVID and are contracting COVID at higher rates as well.

In October of 2020, the British Medical Journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine reported that grocery employees face serious risk of COVID-19 infections and associated psychological distress.

A study of grocery store employees in grocery stores in Boston, for example, found that 20% tested positive for COVID-19 despite high compliance with wearing masks, and the positive rate of infection among grocery and store employees was five times as likely for those who interacted with customers on the grocery store floor than those who did not.

Additionally, the study found that 76% of employees had no symptoms, suggesting that these employees could be an important reservoir of asymptomatic infection.

This is about the public health of all of us and helping to compensate for those workers who are putting themselves in harm way each day.

I'll wrap up, Council President, before going on to other areas, just with a few comments from what the workers themselves said in our public hearing last week.

Each person who refuses to social distance or who reaches over me to grab a zucchini is putting not just me at risk, but my family in harm's way.

I would prefer not to have the hazard, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for compensation given the additional risk that we are facing now.

Another says, I didn't sign up to sacrifice myself to keep my community fed during the worst pandemic crisis in my lifetime, but this is what I'm being asked to do.

And finally, another worker says, I've come to work already crying, already shaking with anxiety over having to deal with unmasked customers.

We are also not alone.

I've mentioned this over the last two to three weeks as we've been talking about this legislation since the beginning of 2021. I wanna note Berkeley and Long Beach have already passed similar legislation.

In fact, the city of Berkeley passed $5 an hour, $4 an hour was also passed in Long Beach.

Currently on the docket for tomorrow, LA City Council is taking on the legislation and it will have a final council vote the following week on February 9th.

LA County is slated to vote tomorrow as well, January 26th.

Montebello is voting on the 27th, which is Wednesday.

And Oakland and San Jose will be voting the first week of February.

A lot of people have asked why now.

As you heard probably over the weekend and last week in terms of the Skyrocketing rates of COVID, the new strand that's more highly contagious, and the fact that our vaccine distribution, while we have hope on the horizon for a more expeditious and effective vaccine distribution, grocery store employees still are in harm's way right now, and we want to compensate for them for the hazards that they are being put in every day.

with this hazard pay.

We did move out the bill on Friday with some amendments.

I want to thank the folks from the Office of Labor Standards who provided us with some feedback, along with the folks who work with grocery store employers.

We did make sure to do stakeholder outreach in addition to working with folks on the front line who represent workers in grocery stores.

You know, I want to be clear.

We did this in a way to make sure that we solicited feedback, that we did our due diligence in having conversations, not just with employee representatives, but with employer representatives.

And part of the language that you see is reflective of the feedback that we receive, because I think it's important, no matter if there's agreement on the bottom line legislation, that I do my due diligence to reach out and make sure that it is going to be implementable so that those who we are seeking to benefit actually have a piece of legislation that will be actionable and meaningful and protect lives.

and help to make sure that we are respecting and reflecting the desire for these frontline workers to have additional hazard pay.

So very happy to have the support from our colleagues on the Finance and Housing Committee.

Thank you for your feedback, your questions, and your support in that committee meeting.

And thanks again to Karina Bull for her incredible work on this.

Sejal Parikh, Chief of Staff in my office for all of the work that's been done.

Samantha Grad and the team at UFCW 21 and Holly Chisa and folks from the grocery world for providing some initial feedback, though I'm not suggesting that they're all in favor, but do want to make sure that we had a chance to let folks know that we have heard some ideas and that is reflected in the substitute bill.

Happy to take any questions, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any questions for Karina or Council Member Mosqueda on the underlying hazard pay legislation?

Councilmember Peterson and then Morales.

Having central staff available for us today, I'm not on that particular committee.

So from my vantage point, the legislation is moving pretty fast.

At the same time, we have an emergency situation here where we've got frontline workers who need assistance.

So I'm generally supportive of the concept.

I'm just still digging into the legislation.

I still have some more time before 2 o'clock.

In terms of Seattle-based grocers, will this bill apply to PCC community markets or any other Seattle-based grocers based on the calculations of square footage and number of employees?

Go ahead, Karina.

Well, I saw that comes from a mosquito unmuted, but my understanding is that this legislation would cover brochures such as PCC.

I believe that PCC meets the 500 or more employees worldwide.

As far as did you have other specific groceries in mind?

I was just curious as to how it might impact locally-based grocers.

I appreciate the exemptions that were already put in, and I just had that question.

That's all I have right now.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Esqueda, did you have anything to add to what Karina said?

No, absolutely.

That's right.

I was wondering if you were asking about specific grocers, happy to follow up with you on that if there's other follow-up questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you so much.

Okay, Council Member Sawant, and then Council Member Morales.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Just wanted to say I would like to add my office as one of the co-sponsors, and just in response to what Council Member Mosqueda said, inviting other offices to co-sponsor.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

We'll make sure that the record reflects that.

The clerks are on the line, so they are hearing it.

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

First, Karina, thank you.

We did have a briefing last week.

Was it last week?

Yes, it's only Monday.

Thank you for that.

I just want to make sure that I understand in terms of how the pay will be recorded for workers, that the pay stub will reflect the hours that they've worked at their normal pay rate.

And then a separate line item will be included to demonstrate their the hazard pay that's been added to that based on their rates.

Is that right?

Just so it's very clear for workers what's going on.

Yes, all that is correct.

Those requirements already exist under the city's wage theft ordinance and this legislation makes it absolutely clear that those requirements do apply to this hazard pay legislation.

So all paychecks must be itemized and employees must receive what's called a revised notice of employment information showing that their pay is going to increase.

And by this $4 per hour and employers have 30 days to proactively provide that to their employees as well.

I ask one more question.

So we talked a little bit about this last week, but the penalty is $50 per person per day.

Can you talk a little bit about, I just wanna make sure that the smaller grocers who may have trouble with record keeping or whatever aren't sort of disproportionately affected by penalties if there's a challenge here.

So can you talk a little bit about how OLS sort of monitors that?

Yeah, so to clarify, the penalties for violating the law, first of all, are to make sure that employees get the money that's owed to them.

And then the director of the Office of Labor Standards has the ability to award three times the amount is owed to them, depending on the severity of the situation.

Employers can have civil penalties imposed on them that would go to the city, or the director could decide that those penalties could go directly to the worker.

Those penalties can be up to $500 per worker.

Now, if in the situation that Office of Labor Standards is conducting an investigation and the business is not providing them with adequate records at all, or perhaps they're giving them several boxes of unorganized records, which kind of is the equivalent of not giving sufficient records.

Then, instead of wading through all those records and having it take six months to a year to a year and a half to figure out exactly how much an employee is owed, the OLS director can instead designate a $50 penalty a four worker for each day that there was deemed to have been a violation.

So it's not automatically a $50 penalty that goes to the worker.

It typically would only be the amount that's due to them, perhaps times three.

But if there are insufficient records, then that can just be a $50 that the director decides in the interest of efficiency.

rather than the precise amount.

Now, in any investigation, the director also has the ability to look at the totality of the circumstances that led to the employer violating the law, which could be that perhaps there wasn't knowledge of this legislation.

Perhaps there was legal counsel that didn't adequately advise them.

Perhaps it was a bookkeeper that made a mistake.

any of those situations could arise.

The director takes those considerations and can take them into account when determining the penalty that is imposed on the employer.

However, the amount that is owed to the employee always stays the same.

It's just the penalty that can be lowered less than 500, depending on the circumstances that led to the violation.

Thank you.

Thanks for clarifying that.

And I would also like to add my name as a co-sponsor Council Member Mosqueda.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Okay.

Any other questions for Karina?

All right.

Looks like there's no other questions.

I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

So thanks Karina for being with us.

Really appreciate you taking the time to dial in this morning and sitting on the sidelines until we got to this particular portion of the agenda.

And thanks for your work on the legislation, really appreciate it.

Okay, colleagues, I'm gonna hand it back over to Council Member Mosqueda to go ahead and finish going through her report.

Thank you very much.

I just again want to underscore my appreciation for Karina.

As you can tell the number of jurisdictions that are considering similar legislation right now to recognize the ongoing hazard that these frontline essential workers are facing is a piece of legislation that's being considered up and down the West Coast as we seek to always be at the front lines of how we protect frontline workers.

Karina has been a tremendous researcher in terms of identifying which strategies other jurisdictions are doing and working diligently to incorporate the feedback that we've received from both employer and employee representatives.

So thank you very much again, Karina.

Speaking of OLS, we are initiating a new process this year.

Many of your offices have already been doing this and reporting back on some of the activities happening in various departments that are in your committees.

And really, I've been finding those reports very informative.

We will be seeking to provide feedback as well from Office of Labor Standards, Office of Housing, FAS, and CBO going forward.

So I have a few reports today from our partners in some of these departments.

In OLS, Office of Labor Standards, I wanna thank them as well for their feedback on the hazard pay legislation.

And they have asked us to remind folks that there is a minimum wage ordinance that requires us each year to increase the minimum wage at the rate of inflation.

This minimum wage took effect on January 1st, 2020, and applies to all employees working in Seattle regardless of their work or immigration status.

The 2021 minimum wage for larger employers with 501 or more employees is $16.69 an hour.

The 2021 minimum wage for small employers with 50 or fewer employees who do not pay at least $1.69 an hour towards the employee's medical benefits and or where the employee does not earn at least $1.69 an hour in tips, their minimum wage is at $16.69 an hour.

The 2021 minimum wage for small employers who do not pay towards employees medical compensation is now $15 an hour.

A reminder as well about your workplace posters in the 2021 workplace poster requirements.

Multiple Seattle labor standards require Seattle employees to display an annual Seattle labor standards ordinance workplace poster in English.

and the primary languages spoken by the employees in Seattle worksites.

The Office of Labor Standards updates this poster annually and makes it available for downloading from their website in English and 19 other languages.

This poster gives notice of employees' rights.

and is an ongoing effort to make sure that we're providing outreach and education technical support first, just like we will be doing with the hazard pay, in addition to making sure that there is compliance.

Thanks again to the work from OLS.

If an employer requires additional posters or posters in other languages, they are available at the Office of Labor Standards website.

Also want to provide an update on the rulemaking activity for the transportation network company drivers or gig drivers from app-based options that people have used like Uber and Lyft over the years, the TNC minimum wage compensation ordinance.

rulemaking related to OLS's effort has begun stakeholder engagement.

And these meetings are designed to bring together community members with experience and knowledge of TNC industry to identify key considerations, data insights that OLS should be considering as they draft the rules for the law.

Again, Seattle Municipal Code 14.33.

We anticipate proposed rules being made available for written public comment in March and April and finalized in late April.

For more information about this law, which went into effect on January 1st, please visit the OLS website.

From FAS, Finance and Administrative Services, they are working actively to support four mass testing sites.

Council Member Herbold, maybe I'll defer on this report because you might have more of an update as you do your weekly COVID response.

I'm happy to provide any additional context from FAS after you provide yours, because yours is usually very comprehensive, and just want to thank the folks at FAS for their work.

And in other updates, personally, I will be attending the National League of Cities webinar today as we think about securing city halls, as we think about coming back to work.

Our partners at the National League of Cities have been engaged in conversations with city councils across the country to think about past, present, and future needs for security as we see escalating violence, and as Council Member Morales noted, threats to existing council members, elected officials across the country.

This is not new, but the need to make sure that we are all safe in the work that we do not only applies to grocery store workers, but it applies as well to those who are public servants.

I echo Council Member Morales' comments in condemning messages that have been received by our colleague, just as I condemn the messages that were spray painted in front of our colleagues.

Houses had their houses, windows, you know, tagged and obscene messages sent to their family members and their homes as well.

You know that the mayor has also received similar levels of threats.

I continue to stand against any of these violent messages that any of our colleagues are receiving and know that it is critically important for people to feel safe in the workplace, both physically safe and to also be free of the type of threats that many of us have received.

But echo Councilmember Morales' comments.

I cannot say it better than you did, Councilmember Morales.

Thank you for bringing that up today.

And then Thursday, I'm going to visit my old alma mater where I got my master's from Evergreen State College, and I'll be providing a presentation to their NPA program on Thursday night with my old favorite teacher, Amy Gould.

I look forward to presenting to future public servants as well as policy analysts and fiscal analysts that are currently in their program, and we'll make sure to let you know about that.

I want to thank the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission, who's been doing an amazing job of sharing with other jurisdictions the work that they have done on democracy vouchers.

That's the topic of interest as we think about how we create a more I engage electorate in public policy and public administration, and I look forward to highlighting some of the work that Seattle has done in this area.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for that report.

Are there any comments, any additional comments or questions on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and go down the line.

We'll hear next from Council Member Peterson and then Council Member Solano.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President.

I know we'd be here until midnight if we We're always thanking each other and echoing each other's thoughts, but I do want to thank Council Member Morales for bringing up this issue about the threats against Council Member Sawant, and thank you, Council Member Esqueda, for echoing that.

We share this, and so I just want to be clear that I condemn the threats against Council Member Sawant and against any public servant.

As Mayor Durkin said, violent threats, vandalism, misogynistic, homophobic hate speech are not acceptable in our community.

So thanks for bringing that up, Council Member Alice.

I also want to thank Council Member Lewis for his tiny home village proposal.

You know, I know there's a lot of common ground there and support for that.

And I appreciate him framing it as, you know, the permanent housing is really the key, but this is a way based on data that we can get folks into permanent housing.

I'm excited about the tiny home village that's gonna be opening up in my district, in the U district to get things rolling there in district four.

So the Transportation Utilities Committee has 18 items on today's full city council agenda.

A lot of these are appointments.

All of these items were approved unanimously by our committee, so we're not expecting much discussion this afternoon on those items.

Our next meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee is Wednesday, February 3rd at 9.30.

And now that voters have renewed funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, we will be considering a new transit service agreement with King County Metro for bus service, but that will be at the February 17th committee.

And for those interested in the spending proposals still being developed for the vehicle license fees, our committee is likely to receive and discuss those in March or April.

That time frame is consistent with the timeline called for by Resolution 119951. Council Member Juarez might speak more about this.

I'll just be briefly about the Archives building, which is located in District 4. Last Tuesday, I joined Council Member Juarez at a public forum hosted by our State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, to hear from the public how best to protect our National Archives, Scores of indigenous tribes, researchers, many others rely on these to preserve their histories.

I stand in solidarity with the elected officials at all levels of government working to protect these archives and continue to support the legal actions taken by Attorney General Ferguson's office and many others, including our own city attorney, to demand sufficient public process and ultimately to prevent these priceless historical documents from being relocated thousands of miles away.

That's my report, thank you.

Thank you Council Member Peterson for that report and those comments, really appreciate it.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, we're going to go ahead and move general line.

Next up is Council Member Sawant, followed by Council Member Strauss.

Good morning Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everybody.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee will be tomorrow, Tuesday, January 26th.

At that meeting, we will hear from renters about the danger of a deluge of evictions once the eviction moratoriums end, and how they are organizing to extend the eviction moratorium at least to the end of this year, we will discuss draft legislation to extend the moratorium.

We will also discuss draft legislation to create the guaranteed right to counsel, legal counsel in Seattle for all renters facing eviction.

During last year's budget, The People's Budget Movement fought for and won expanded funding for eviction defense attorneys, which was absolutely essential.

It is not immediately clear if additional funding would be needed, and if so, how much would be needed in 2021, because it's not certain when the mayor and governor will extend their eviction moratoriums to.

This legislation will make having an attorney in court with you when you face eviction a right, regardless of ability to pay, just like you have the right to an attorney to a public defender when you're accused of a crime.

In this legislation, we are making clear that these public eviction defense attorneys can represent people even who are evicted by default, meaning that they, for whatever reason, were not able to respond to the eviction paperwork in time or were not able to appear in court.

The Housing Justice Project has sent my office data showing that default evictions are a massive problem.

Anywhere from 30% to a shocking 65% of renters with eviction notices end up experiencing eviction by default depending on the region and the time.

We have heard absolute horror stories, including of people who have been in comas when they received their eviction notices and got evicted by default.

We will be bringing this evidence into the committee, and we will be sending just gut-wrenching testimony from a number of renters who have added their testimonials In the petition that we organized for extending the eviction moratorium and I think these personal stories, including of stories from small landlords, I think will offer.

a real human evidence of the toll that will, that the crisis will take if steps are not taken immediately, not only to extend the eviction moratorium and offer guaranteed right to counsel, but also the larger question, which is the statewide movement to cancel rent and debt.

And as many council members might have seen, and if not, I would urge you to Look at this important news.

Moody's Analytics is reporting that renter debt is such a major crisis waiting to break out into the open once stay-at-home ends and the so-to-say normal economy resumes.

and they are estimating that the average renter debt is over $5,200.

So this is an absolute tsunami that is going to be unleashed on tens of millions of Americans and on the economy as a whole.

Finally, the committee will discuss and vote on five appointments and reappointments to the Renters Commission.

Of those five, two appointment packs were not ready in time for the publication of the introduction and referral calendar last week.

So I will be walking them on at the I want to express my solidarity and speaking out and protesting against the Tacoma police officer who drove his car into a crowd Saturday night and ran over at least one person and possibly striking others.

This is an officer who has apparently been with the department for nearly 30 years.

I watched the video.

It is unspeakable.

It really goes to show once again yet another instance, unfortunately, another instance of how we urgently need an elected civilian oversight board with full powers over the police, including hiring and firing, subpoena powers, and policies and procedures.

My office sends best wishes and solidarity to those who are in the hospital right now because of this incident and wish them a speedy recovery.

Thank you to council members for their comments about the death threats that have been directed against my office.

As I said in my public letter to the mayor, the fire chief, the police chief, and the president of the Firefighters Union Local, I believe these emails must be taken very seriously given the current political context with an emboldened right wing nationally and the specific threatening content of the emails and the fact that these emails originate from a city of Seattle email account.

And I wanted to also reiterate the point that I made in that letter, which is that this is not an attack against just me or my office.

This is an attack on the Black Lives Matter movement, on everybody who has been fighting for a better society.

And we know from history that the right wing, the ruling class, these entities attack figures, public figures first, but those attacks are on the movement as a whole and that is why we need to stand in solidarity.

Working people, the oppressed need to stand in solidarity against these attacks.

Just for the record, for a correction, Council Member Morales thanked the fire and police departments for investigating.

I hope they are, but I personally have not received any information.

My office has not heard a word from the police department about progress on investigation in the whole week since my office has reported the death threats.

As for the fire department, my office received a message on December 31st of last year from the Seattle Firefighters Executive Director of Administration, the department from which these emails originated.

And I appreciate that they notified my office about that.

That email from the fire department noted that the SFD employee is claiming that he did not send the emails and promised that the SFD's Equal Employment Opportunity Investigator is currently looking into the matter.

As I said, I appreciate that this email, that this message was sent to my office proactively by the department leadership.

At the same time, I'm also concerned that I have received two more threatening emails since the time this email from the department went to my office from the same employee's account.

And these emails are increasingly serious in nature.

And meanwhile, I have not received any information from the department in the nearly three weeks since they sent me the email.

I also wanted to share with members of the public who are watching how completely moved I am, my staff are, and Socialist Alternative is at the outpouring of support and solidarity we have received from ordinary people, from working people, from community members, all throughout District 3, throughout Seattle, throughout the region, and nationally and internationally.

I wanted to say that that is the exact kind of working-class solidarity that we need in order to stand against these attacks by the far right.

I also wanted to share with those who are watching that UAW 4121, the union that represents the graduate student workers at the University of Washington, has published a public statement from their membership and leadership standing against these threats and I just wanted to share read out an extract of that because I thought it really speaks to the kind of solidarity we need especially in the labor movement.

UA quote UAW 4121 stands firmly with our union sister council member Chama Sawant member of AFD 1789 against the violent and increasingly concerning threats that she has received over the last month.

Given the boldness of the right-wing nationally at its worst during the insurrection on January 6th, these threats must be taken extremely seriously.

These threats are part of a broad right-wing and white nationalist backlash and they are not only an attack against Council Member Sawant, they are but also against the movements that she stands in solidarity with.

As a union we unequivocally reject the violence that these threats represent which is antithetical to the collective action and solidarity of the labor movement.

Non-violent direct action is very different from threats to do harm to elected leaders and their staff and we are committed to speaking loudly against any equivocation between the two.

These threats are poisonous to the solidarity that unions must build, and there is no room for these attacks in the labor movement." I really appreciate the union taking a stand against any kind of equivocation between far-right attacks and these kinds of death threats on the one hand, and peaceful protest movements, militant protest movements by the left, by Black Lives Matter, and the labor movement on the other hand. And I also thank UAW 4121 in their statement for urging that the Martin Luther King County Labor Council leadership also take a position against these threats because As I said myself to my follow-up letter to Brother Kenny Stewart, who is the president of the Firefighters Union Local that represents the firefighters in the city of Seattle, thanking him for his email, responding to the threats. I am urging him to speak out publicly about this because as, in the words of the proud sisters and brothers that helped build the labor movement in the very early days of the 19th and 20th centuries, An injury to one is an injury to all. In this letter to Brother Kenny, I also clarify that the labor movement cannot afford to allow these ideas to gain ground, these right-wing ideas, including anti-worker ideas, ideas based on sexism and racism and xenophobia. which only serve to empower the billionaire class. And these ideas make it harder for workers to unite against systemic inequality and to fight together to win the good standards of living all workers deserve. And I will also share that the president of OC 1488, Paula Lukasik, has joined in UAW 4121 in their statement. and I really urge other unions to also speak up about this because, as I said before, this is an attack on everybody on the left, everybody who is progressively fighting for social change, and I appreciate their comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant, for those comments.

Any other comments or questions for Council Member Sawant?

Okay.

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move down the line.

Next up is Councilmember Strauss, followed by Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning.

Still good morning, colleagues.

There are two items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's Introduction and Referral Calendar.

Council Bill 11992, which adopts building code and construction codes, and Council Bill 9993, which adopts the updated energy code.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda, and the next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is this Wednesday, January 27th, with three items on our agenda, a discussion and vote on the energy code update and amendments, a discussion and vote on the construction code updates, and a discussion and vote on application to extend the contract rezone of 1106 34th Avenue.

In events, last week I attended the Regional Transportation Committee where we accepted the 2020 King County Metro Transit System Evaluation.

I attended the Maritime Industrial Meeting, specifically set up to discuss public safety.

This coming week, this Thursday, I'll be attending the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board Meeting to vote on the funding package for the West Seattle Bridge.

And just want to take a moment to note that threats to public officials and property destruction are not acceptable actions this year, last year, or frankly, ever.

Here in District 6, I know I'm biased, but it's the best district in the city, in my opinion.

Again, I know I'm biased.

Sorry, colleagues.

I meet with District 6 residents every week and I look forward to meeting with residents tomorrow during and after nine to five business hours.

Last week I heard from neighbors in Tingle Town, Crown Hill, Ballard, Green Lake, Wallingford, and Finney Ridge discussing cleanup efforts including graffiti removal along 15th Avenue and trash pickup ideas and how to create public-private partnerships to address our homelessness crisis, much like what Council Member Lewis is discussing today, safety concerns on Aurora, public safety and what changes need to be made to deliver public safety to all of RCL's residents, and small business concerns during our times of COVID and how to address them.

So I just want to take the moment to thank everyone who made time to meet with me last week, and I look forward to speaking with more D6 residents tomorrow.

In other news, today at council, I will be circulating a proclamation to recognize Molly Bennett Kaufman, who has worked in healthcare for children of the city of Seattle for over 50 years.

Molly was the first graduate from the University of Washington as a pediatric nurse practitioner in the year of 1973. Molly is retiring on February 10th and is celebrating her retirement with colleagues and friends this coming week.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank Molly for all the work that she has done to support children and families in our city all of these years and to wish her a happy retirement.

I know that she will be staying busy.

The mayor is concurring with this proclamation and I hope you will join me in honoring Molly by signing this proclamation as well.

Council President, I believe signatures will be needed to be added, and I'll hand it over to you to walk us through the last steps before signatures can be affixed to this proclamation.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any comments or questions on the proclamation or any other aspect of Council Member Strauss's report?

Okay, hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like to have their signature affixed to the proclamation honoring Molly Bennett Kaufman for her years of service to Seattle children and families.

Lewis?

Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Councilmember Juarez?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

And could you call on Councilmember Lewis one more time?

Sure.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Linda.

I was muted before.

Yes.

No worries.

Eight in favor.

Okay.

And then Councilmember Sawant, just want to make sure you have an opportunity to add your name if you'd like to.

Sorry, I did, but maybe it was not audible.

Yes.

Okay.

There we go.

Thank you.

Nine in favor.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate that.

Okay.

Thanks for that, colleagues.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss for the opportunity to add our names to our signature to that proclamation.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

No, thank you, Council President.

Thank you, colleagues.

That is my report.

Great, thank you so much.

Okay, moving down the line, we're gonna hear next from Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I do have the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting tomorrow, 9.30 a.m.

at that committee meeting.

We will continue our conversation on the confirmation of Curry Mayor.

Curry Mayor is the mayor's appointment for the Office of emergency management director and we will consider a vote.

I thank my colleagues for submitting questions as part of that process and hope to finalize the confirmation, the committee recommendation for the confirmation tomorrow.

And follow up to the council's actions last year, beginning with the 2020 summer rebalancing package, we'll have two presentations regarding the funding that was allocated by the Council for Public Safety to begin to scale up community-led investments in public safety.

Specifically, we'll be hearing on the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, which is focused on the geographic hub model funded with $4 million, which has already been contracted and launched.

We will hear a presentation from community and HSD, including community passageways, urban family, Boys and Girls Club, Southeast Safety Network Hub, the YMCA Alive and Free program.

Secondly, we are also going to hear a presentation from HSD on the community capacity investment process, and that was also funded during the summer 2020 rebalancing process and included $12 million appropriation.

This funding process is still in development, and we'll hear a little bit more about HSD's plans to get those dollars out the door.

This will be the fourth committee meeting also on less lethal weapons, the June ban passed by the council.

We have a draft bill for recommendations by committee.

As a reminder, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will make a recommendation on draft legislation for review by the monitor and the Department of Justice in line with the consent decree process and Judge Robard's decision.

The full council will not consider legislation until after this review has taken place.

Under the consent decree, the court-appointed monitor can approve the proposal or determine that it conflicts with the terms of the consent decree settlement agreement.

If the city or the Department of Justice object to the monitor's determination, they can meet and confer with the monitor, and if they choose, petition the court.

Ultimately, court approval is needed for any legislation to go into effect.

So, again, the actions of the committee have been to develop legislation that takes into consideration the input that we already received on the total ban that was passed in June and to bring another version of our recommended regulation to the monitor, DOJ, and the court for their consideration.

I also want to mention that another item on the committee agenda for tomorrow includes the Seattle Police Department budget bill for 2021. If you recall, we took some action in December in the Finance and Housing Committee where we made some commitments to reduce the Seattle Police Department budget in light of the fact that we made an increase in the Seattle Police Department budget at the end of the year to adjust for increased overtime costs.

I originally was planning to hear this bill or to begin the process of hearing this bill during the last committee meeting on January 12th.

Staff and the city central staff and the city budget office both requested additional time.

And so this item was held until tomorrow's meeting.

There's no vote plan for the meeting, and we're still awaiting some of the information requested, but I think it's important to sort of get a lay of the land on where we are with the bill, with the police department's budget, and also some updated information on 2020 separations.

I want to mention that at my regularly scheduled meeting with Chief Scoggins on Wednesday, I did ask him about their progress investigating the emails that Council Member Sawant has received, while the Seattle Times reported that the police department had not been notified until late Tuesday, this past Tuesday, about the incident.

Chief Scoggins told me that this was not the case and that the fire department had immediately notified the police department about this issue upon upon learning.

Further, the chief assured me that if it was indeed a fire department individual sending these emails that they would be held accountable.

I just want to also mention that the fire department is working with Seattle IT to fully investigate and they will report on those findings as soon as they're able to.

The fire department COVID-19 tests administered at their four sites is now cumulatively 582,000 tests between June 5th and January 20th.

We're now moving into vaccination distribution by the City of Seattle.

We know that the City of Seattle has already received 1,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine.

And back on January 9th, the city was certified as a vaccine distributor.

The Seattle Fire Department immediately went to work with the goal of vaccinating 1,000 of our vulnerable seniors in adult family care facilities within two weeks.

This was done with two mobile vaccination teams.

As of last Wednesday, the Seattle Fire Department was exceeding their goal.

They are also, in addition to vaccinating residents and staff of adult family care facilities, they are also working to expand their goals beyond what was originally announced to also include some permanent supportive housing facilities throughout the city.

Seattle has launched a vaccination website.

We have a weekly newsletter with updates on eligibility criteria, vaccination progress in Seattle and King County and new city of Seattle vaccination efforts.

You can sign up at Seattle.gov forward slash vaccine.

Right now, again, assuming availability of vaccine.

The following groups are in line as priorities to get vaccinated healthcare workers, high risk first responders.

residents of long-term care facility, all people over 65 years of age, and all people over 50 years old who cannot live independently.

The city of Seattle, as I mentioned earlier, has been approved by the state to receive doses from the state and provide vaccination directly.

Seattle will continue its focus on its limited weekly doses on its highest risk communities.

It's really important to recognize that the city has infrastructure in place to quickly turn at least one of the existing COVID testing sites into a mass vaccination site.

My understanding, we can do that on the drop of a dime.

What we don't have, again, is access to the necessary vaccine supply.

The need is why Mayor Durkin has jo the country and calling f administration to allocate couple other HSD-specific updates.

The Human Services Department has released what they're referring to as a geographic-specific food bank services RFP.

They released it on Wednesday.

These funds are available for July to December 2021 and all of 2022. We're working to seek a diverse group of providers to serve people living in Delridge, Georgetown, and the South Park neighborhoods.

And the reason why we're doing this geographic specific food bank services RFP is because back in February of 2019, a report produced by public health and partners on healthy food availability funded by the sugary beverage tax found healthy food priority areas are clustered near the Southern boundary around the Duwamish Waterway.

and they called out Georgetown, South Park, Delridge and High Point.

So to fill the gap, HSD has held term limited contracts with food banks serving these areas and this geographic specific RFP is a longer term solution.

The RFP was initially intended for 2020, but was delayed due to the pandemic, and services include, but are not limited to, food bank operations, home delivery of culturally relevant foods, meal programs, weekend hunger or backpack programs, nutrition, education, and social service navigation.

For more information, you can go to seattle.gov forward slash human services and click on funding opportunities.

A...

A Seattle Police Department update.

Many of you probably saw that on Saturday.

There was some police coverage that the police department was pursuing a different policy in determining who to arrest when vandals destroy public or private property.

In the interest of ensuring that you all have accurate information about these policies and that I'm fulfilling my responsibility to be knowledgeable myself about SPD arrest policies and city attorney charging policies, I immediately reached out to Chief Diaz over the weekend about what was being reported as a new policy.

He told me this weekend that this is not a change in policy and that this is the city attorney's willingness to prosecute.

I also spoke to City Attorney Holmes, and he told me that there was no change in the City Attorney's office either, but that they had already charged the single arrest that had been referred to them from last Wednesday under existing policy.

I just, again, in the interest in making sure that we all have accurate information about both the arrest policies and the charge policies, I just want to share that with council members.

Also, I want to take this opportunity to, again, continue to call for peaceful protest and express my ongoing opposition to property damage, as well as injuries to officers and protesters alike.

And I will continue to call for this peaceful demonstration in opposition to violence in our city whenever I see it.

Other events.

either last week or coming up this week.

Last Thursday, I met with the Human Services Department's new interim director, Helen Howell.

We talked about our respective priorities for the Human Services Department, and I want to take this opportunity to welcome her to the city, and I really look forward to working with her this year.

I also testified last week at the State House and Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee regarding House Bill 1088, referring to what are called impeachment disclosures, what we refer to as people who are on the Brady list.

The bill, as drafted, would update statewide standards with best practices to address potential impeachment disclosures of misconduct.

affecting the credibility of officers pursuant to Brady v. Maryland.

I spoke to the fact that I believe that there's an opportunity with House Bill 1088 to address a concern that Senate Bill 6188 passed in 2018. may overly limit adverse personnel actions and accountability sought over Brady List officers.

And I requested that the committee consider including language in House Bill 1088 that does not require but allows consideration of adverse personnel actions for Brady List officers who are on the list for good reasons.

I also, the poll as currently drafted appears to limit law enforcement agencies from basing their hiring decisions on ready list participation.

The bill, as it's drafted, says it is not itself a bar to employment.

And as it relates to that, I requested language in the bill clarifying that local law enforcement departments are not required to, but that they may refrain from hiring those officers for whom there is an investigated and proven record of engagement and misconduct affecting their credibility.

And in doing so, I think it's an important accountability measure, but I also think it's really important to support our law enforcement's efforts to hire only those officers who can fully do the job that they're hired to do.

I was a happy coincidence to have have the opportunity to speak to this particular committee, the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday, on a day that they were also hearing House Bill 1140, which is a youth rights ordinance, very similar to the youth rights ordinance that Councilmember Morales and I sponsored over the summer related to ensuring that young people are aware of their rights whenever they have interactions with the police department that might lead to arrest.

So really pleased to see that the state legislature is considering a similar bill.

And that's all I have for today, thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, we'll head down the line and hear from Council Member Juarez.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Let me turn up my audio here.

Here we go.

Thank you, Council President.

There are no items of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

The February 2nd committee meeting has been canceled.

I will be brief.

For the Seattle National Archives, we began our meeting with our saying that our history lives here, that we should keep it here.

So on January 19th, during the public hearing, I announced that the city intends to join as a plaintiff in this lawsuit to stop the federal government from selling the National Archives facility in Seattle.

So I'm happy to say that we will be joining as a plaintiff in that lawsuit.

There were over 300 people signed up and provided public comment regarding this potential sale.

And I was joined by, as Councilmember Peterson shared, Councilmember Peterson, Secretary of State Kim Wyman, State Representative Deborah Lakenoff, and State Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos.

And we wanted to thank them for participating in their kind words and informational statements.

The AG recorded everyone's comments and they will be sent to the federal agency in addition to the four lawsuits in order to protect our records to stop the sale.

In regards to Sound Transit, as you all know, I had my Sound Transit realignment workshop this Thursday.

And this was our first meeting last week to begin the process of program, to begin the process of discussing the program realignment.

Sound Transit is creating a, no pun intended, a long runway for board members to consider criteria, numbers, and updated information as we get it.

The anticipated board work on realignment, the timeline that I have here, and I can get a lot of you the PowerPoint in a little bit more detail.

February is to discuss realignment approaches.

March is to define approaches for public engagement.

April is to seek public feedback and discuss cost review and results.

May is to discuss public feedback and board priorities.

June, develop the realignment plans.

and July take the final action to adopt realignment plans.

I just want to spend a little bit of time, and again, I can forward you the PowerPoint and kind of single out what two slides are probably most important to some degree.

As you know, Sound Transit will be looking at two approaches.

That's the planned required approach.

That's the voter approved approach or plan.

And second, the expanded capacity approach.

That is where we seek state and federal money as well as an expansion debt capacity.

In the PowerPoint, which is over 50 pages, if you would like it, I can send it to you.

But if those of you are listening, it is already posted on the website for Sound Transit.

The board discussion, the question presented is how should project evaluations inform realignment and decision making?

And that starts at about page 54. But basically, there's eight criteria.

And the eight criteria that the board will be looking at is, let's see what we got here.

We'll be looking at ridership potential, socioeconomic equity, connecting centers, tenure, outside funding, completing the spine, advancing logically beyond the spine, and phasing compatibility.

And again, we can go into a little bit more detail when we have another round.

And we can forward that PowerPoint to you with some questions that you may have, which I'm anticipating some of you will.

Let me get back to the rest of my participants.

Hold on, I dropped it.

Take your time.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Let's see.

For parks, let's see, we have an update on parks.

Here we go.

The Amy Lee Tennis Center, in response to Washington State's recent modifications to public health guidelines for indoor tennis, Seattle Parks and Rec has reopened the Amy Lee Tennis Center for reservations only starting January 21st.

The center is open Monday through Friday from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m.

and Saturday and Sunday from 9 to 5.15.

Masks are now required at all times, including during play.

The Clean Cities Initiative, this is an update from January 11th to the 17th, We have well over 1,300 needles were removed from encampment locations and 87,000 pounds of trash removed to 21 park encampment locations and two park emphases on clean locations.

So what I should say is that what we've been doing is getting weekly updates from the superintendent Agare about how much needles and trash and basically the money that the council allocated during budget for the Clean Cities Initiative.

So they give us weekly updates about how much trash they're picking up, where they're locating, where they're doing laser focus and how the surge is working.

As you know, from the shower program from January 13th to the 19th, the city of Seattle served 336 users in the shower program at five community centers.

The Green Lake site was staffed by Uplift Northwest and they served the most people, 141 people.

social distancing ambassadors program from January 13th through the 19th.

The highest average numbers observed and reported were volunteer and Alki Beach Parks.

Again, we know that we have to have social distancing of six feet.

I want to thank these ambassadors who volunteer to go into parks and do these things.

Food distribution, Food Lifeline continues to distribute free food boxes at the Rainier Beach Community Center on Wednesdays from 10 to 1. This Wednesday, January 20th, last Wednesday, 987 food boxes were distributed to families in need.

Most of the boxes were distributed to families with three to six family members.

Let's see.

Last week, my staff attended a meeting of the Victory Heights Community Council.

I attended a meeting with Council Member Peterson and central staff to create our 2020-2021 work plan, as we all are doing, redoing our work plans.

Again, I had my bi-weekly check-in with Superintendent Agave.

And as I shared, I attended the Sound Transit Realignment Workshop.

and I also attended the community economic development meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, for that report.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Juarez?

All right.

Hearing none, thanks again, Council Member Juarez, for those comments.

Really appreciate it.

All right, so folks, I'll be quick on my report.

I wanted to share really quickly from the mayor's office and Department of Education and Early Learning some really exciting news and funding opportunity.

Last week, the city announced that $2.4 million in child care stabilization grants were going to be made available for licensed child care providers, as well as family, friend, and neighbor caregivers in Seattle.

Grants are up to $10,000.

Grants of up to $10,000 are available for child care providers operating in Seattle.

And there are $500 grants available for friends, family, and neighbor caregivers who care for children between the ages of 0 to 12 years of age for more than 10 hours a week.

Applicants can contact Child Care Resources Provider Line at 1-800-466-HELP.

1-1-1-4.

And awards are expected to go out as early as mid to late February.

So strongly encourage folks or child care provider community to take serious the opportunity for applying for those grants.

Later this week, I'll be attending the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

It's the first meeting of 2021. It'll be Thursday at 4 o'clock.

Looking forward to joining those folks to talk about all things related to the FEPP levy.

I have no items on this afternoon's introduction and referral calendar and no items from the Governance and Education Committee on the City Council agenda.

Last Thursday, the Regional Homeless Authorities Governing Committee formally adopted the bylaws that will govern the Governing Committee's procedures.

Moving forward, this Friday, I'll be attending a special joint executive session of the Regional Homeless Authority Implementation Board and Governing Committee.

At this executive session, we will meet the finalists for the CEO position and deliberate over a hiring decision.

On February 4th, the governing committee plans to take up a recommendation provided to us by the implementation board to select the final candidate to serve as the chief executive officer, the inaugural chief executive officer of our regional approach to homelessness, which is the Regional Homelessness Authority.

This Thursday at 10 o'clock in the morning, I will be attending the PSRC Executive Board meeting at this meeting, as I mentioned last week.

We will be voting on a package of $14.4 million in funding for the West Seattle Bridge as recommended by the Transportation Policy Board.

I previously briefed folks here that when this funding proposal was before the Transportation Policy Board, we had lots of advocacy from our colleague Council Member Juarez and Council Member Peterson.

I want to thank them again for making sure that those regional partners understood why this is such an important investment for the city and looking forward to ensuring that the Executive Board takes final action on the recommendation as proposed by the Transportation Policy Board.

Anyone who has concerns or would like to have more information, you're welcome to reach out to me.

Happy to talk to you more about that in advance of the meeting.

On Tuesday, I will be meeting with some of our local business improvement associations.

This meeting is being convened by the Soto BIA.

I want to thank them for convening this group of folks who are going to come together and talk about a variety of economic development issues, public safety issues, and other issues that are top of mind for them.

Just really thank them for reaching out to me proactively and extending an invitation for Um, us to engage in conversation on issues that are impacting their business improvement areas in particular, looking forward to that conversation on Tuesday.

On Wednesday evening, I'll be joining members of community to address some ongoing safety issues related to.

a parking lot at a Safeway in Councilmember Morales' district.

And looking forward to, again, having conversation with folks in that context who are bringing forward community safety issues and community safety human-centered approaches to making sure that we can continue to have a safe area in that part of District 2. Looking forward to that conversation.

Lastly, colleagues today today last week we shared a proclamation in honor of Louise turn in and am interested in getting folks to add their their signature to that that proclamation Louise, of course, is no stranger to many of us, she has been the leader of.

at the Greater Seattle Business Association, which is our local LGBTQ chamber of commerce located in Capitol Hill.

She has been a tremendous advocate on behalf of those minority-owned businesses.

She's also done a tremendous, tremendous job of building out a really impressive scholarship fund that has specifically focused on LGBTQ youth of color.

And has done such an amazing job to make sure that we are continuing to have conversation with each other even when we disagree.

And I have been so impressed with her legacy.

And this is an opportunity for us to acknowledge the work that she has done in the context of her announcement that she will be retiring as the CEO of GSBA.

So this afternoon we will be joined by Mark Rosine from the Greater Seattle Business Association and other members of GSBA who will receive this proclamation.

It is a surprise proclamation.

It will be presented to her at her virtual retirement party on Sunday, so we did warn them that it's a public venue, so it may not be kept surprise for much longer, but nonetheless, we are looking forward to shepherding this proclamation forward on behalf of members and supporters of GSBA, and looking forward to folks adding their signature to the proclamation.

Any questions about the proclamation before I ask the clerk to call the roll?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like to add their signature to the proclamation honoring Louise Chernin?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Eight in favor.

Thank you so much.

Okay, colleagues, I don't have anything else on my report for today.

Is there anything else for the good of the order?

Hearing none, that does conclude our business for this morning's council briefing agenda.

I look forward to seeing all of you in just under two hours.

See you soon.

Take care.